Rayudu handed two-match ban over Karnataka T20 reaction

Hyderabad captain Ambati Rayudu has been suspended for the two games in the Vijay Hazare 50-overs tournament after he was found to be guilty of breaching the BCCI code of conduct during the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Rayudu was involved in an argument with the umpires during the Hyderabad-Karnataka match earlier this month after two runs were added to Karnataka’s total at the end of their innings due to a revised boundary call. With Hyderabad eventually falling two runs short in their chase, the team, under Rayudu, stayed back in the middle and urged the umpires to commence the Super Over. Their contention was that they were batting with the target of 204 in mind, before two more runs were added to revise it to 206. The ensuing agreement about the Super Over delayed the start of the next game between Kerala and Andhra. That match was eventually shortened to 13-overs-a side due to the delay.

Since Rayudu admitted to the charge levelled by the on-field umpires Abhijit Deshmukh, Ulhas Vithalrao Gandhe and third umpire Anil Dandekar, and accepted the sanction, there was no need for a formal hearing. He had said at the time that his intention wasn’t to delay the start of the next game. “There was some confusion in the middle at the start of our innings,” Rayudu had told reporters after the match. “What I went and told the umpire was ‘sir you cannot change the score, we are batting for 204 as our target’. That is exactly what I told him and he told me ‘we’ll see it at the end, let the match start’. [Karnataka captain] Vinay Kumar had stopped for nine minutes before the second innings. They had no business to stop the match once the target was declared. Then what we said was we were playing for 204, and that was my exact words.

“At the end, we went and asked to start the Super Over. That is exactly our point of contention. We never even thought of stopping the second match. That has got nothing to do with us. We were saying that our match was not complete, we still have to play the Super Over. That is exactly why we went to the middle, we were actually going to warm-up then.”

The BCCI is also looking into the role of the Hyderabad team manager in the incident.

Rayudu has faced code-of-conduct issues previously. In the 2012 edition of the IPL, he was fined 100% of his match fee for using abusive, obscene language towards Harshal Patel of Royal Challengers Bangalore. He was also involved in a tiff with Mumbai Indians team-mate Harbhajan Singh in 2016.